Easily Close Pencil and Brush Paths

Tips | February 18th, 2008

Easily Close Pencil and Brush Paths

The Pencil and Brush tools are useful, but sometimes frustrating. I always found the open paths it creates particularly annoying. A simple solution is to press the Option/Alt key when you are ready to close a path. Once pressed, it will join the first and last anchor points with a straight line. Holding down the Option/Alt key and drawing a little past the starting anchor will close the path automatically.

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8 Responses to “Easily Close Pencil and Brush Paths”

  1. Carmen says:

    This helps me a ton!

  2. BenRulz says:

    Cool…..a very handy trick indeed….. must go and try it out….. great job…thnx a ton..!!

  3. Maxo says:

    THANXS !!!!!

  4. matt says:

    thanks!

  5. wardhania says:

    nuwun…

  6. Is there a way to force a closed path every time you use the pencil tool?

    • Rype says:

      Not that I know of. I think Adobe thinks people are use the Pencil and Brush tools more to create paths than closed shapes, but I wish they did have this option. I use the Pencil Brush tools mostly to create closed shapes. Even if you double click on one of the tools in the Tools panel there isn’t an option to automatically close the path.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. [...] to close the path is to hold down Option / Alt right before you are done drawing, as explained in a previous post. Fill the shape with white and no [...]

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